Denoise AI over-sharpens for me

All,

I’ve been a loyal user of Topaz products for a very long time. I have had great success with Topaz Denoise, and was eager to try out the Denoise AI product.

While Denoise AI has remarkable noise reduction, I find that it dramatically over-sharpens for me – even when at absolutely lowest settings (noise reduction 0.01, sharpen 0.0, details 0.0), it adds massive sharpening artifacts to some photos.

I have an example here, a zoo shot from my new 90D. Apologies in advance for the file sizes. In this folder, you’ll find the original, Denoise6 (strength 0.07), and DenoiseAI (noise reduction 0.01, all others zero). You can see, especially in the colored feathers just below the head, the introduction of massive sharpening artifacts. This was really disappointing.

Does anyone else see this? I opened a trouble ticket, but the feedback I got was, “looks good to me”.

My view is, if sharpening is set a zero, it shouldn’t do any sharpening!

Regards,
Dan

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Sorry, I can’t see artifacts, and Denoise 6 and Denoise AI images look almost identical to me.
Have to say I don’t often use Denoise AI. Had an image today with lots of color noise and I needed Denoise 6 to get it out.

@dan-26504 Yes I see a high sharpening at low values.
I agree with you that the sharpening slider should give zero sharpening at zero if it’s technical possible.
For me it look like a bug and the sharpening range too narrow, 100 sharpening looks too similar to zero sharpening setting.
Maybe you could find better examples?
The overall look of this picture is OK for me even with the slightly high sharpening.
But I wouldn’t use denoising on this picture at all, there is no annoying noise in my personal view.

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I agree. I’m a nature photographer and many of my photos are of inverts that have small features. Plus I really have to be careful with feathers and fur as well. Over sharpening is very apparent in many of my frames using DeNoise AI. Would really appreciator having this toned down a bit.

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The unwanted sharpening and the introduced artifacts (most often horizontal, colored lines) were reason enough for me to dismiss the trial.

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I downloaded your original tif picture and ran Denoise AI on it (using the preview only) in the sharpen mode. Setting Remove Blur to 0.01 there is a definite amount of sharpening even though it looks ok to me. I agree with you that the setting should produce almost no sharpening. I have included 100% crops below for comparison. You might be happier with the AI Clear setting even though it sharpens as well.
Original:

Denoise AI:

There is a “Reduce Noise” filter in Topaz Studio 2 that should work fine for you. Since there is only a little noise in your picture, it will reduce it and sharpen if desired. I did an example below.

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All, I agree that this photo has very little noise – just some in the background. However it was a great example of the over-aggressive sharpening so I included it.

Thanks for the feedback, I hope that the Denoise developers will make this defect less apparent in a future version. Until then, there is Denoise 6!

Dan

@Ivanq Please consider filing a bug report about this issue – they simply don’t believe this is happening.

Regards,
Dan

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Yes, this is a problem I’m finding too. Works great for CA reduction but when I zoom in I’m seeing jagged edges - even though I have the sharpening tool set lowest possible. I have compared same image with Denoise 6 and not seeing any sharpening problem so find myself going back to using it instead. If this can be fixed to zero sharpening it would be a great tool but for now I’m back to the older version.